“Is that it? Where would I be without the wise Leopard? What is this answer that I already know?”
“They would have eaten down to girl and boy bones by now. They were waiting for us.”
“Your slaver told them we were coming,” I said to the Leopard.
“He’s not my slaver,” he said.
“You both fool. Why send we on a mission then stop we from doing it?” Sogolon asked.
“He changed his mind,” I said.
She frowned. I was not going to say, Sogolon, what you say here is true. The Leopard nodded.
“Nothing point to no betrayal from the slaver,” she said.
“Of course. The Zogbanu was just following shifting winds. Maybe it was someone on this raft. Or off it.”
The sun was right above us and the lake had gone deeper blue. Bunshi was in the water, I saw her low down in the blue; her skin, which looked black in the night, now looked indigo. She darted like a fish, up above the water, then down, the east far off and west far off, then back, right beside the raft. She was like water creatures I have seen in rivers. A fin right down the back of her head and neck, shoulders and breasts and belly like a woman’s, but from the hip down the long swishy tail of a great fish.
“What is she doing?” I said to Sogolon, who up till now hadn’t bothered to look at me. The view ahead was nothing but the line separating sea from sky, but she fixed her eyes on it.
“You have never seen a fish?”
“She is not a fish.”
“She is speaking to Chipfalambula. Asking her for one more traveling mercy to take us to the other side. We are not here by permission, after all.”
“Not where?”
“You fool,” she said, and looked down.
“This?” I said, and kicked up dirt.
Her standing there, looking like a leader, annoyed me. I walked past her to the front of the raft and sat down. Here the mound sloped down into the river. I could see the rest of the raft under the water. It was not a raft, it was a floating island controlled by wind or magic. Two fishes, maybe as tall as I am, swam in front.
What I saw next I was sure I did not see. The island below the sea opened a slit right at the front where I sat and swallowed the first fish. Half of the second stuck out, but the opening chomped it down. Below my right heel I saw Chipfalambula’s eyes looking up at me. I jumped. Her gills opened and closed. Farther down her enormous fins, each wider than a boat, paddled slow in the lake, the half below the water a morning blue, the half above the colour of sand and dust.
“Popele asks permission of the Chipfalambula the toll taker to take us to the other side. She has not yet given an answer,” Sogolon said.
“We are long gone from land. Is that not her answer?”
Sogolon laughed. Bunshi leapt fully out of the water and dived, right in front of it, whatever it was.
“Chipfalambula does not take you into deep water to carry you to the other side. She takes you out to eat you.”
Sogolon was serious. Nobody felt the thing moving but we all felt when it stopped. Bunshi swam right up to its mouth and I thought it would swallow her. She dove under and came up by the side of her right fin. It swatted her as one would a wasp and she flew into the sky and landed far off into the water. She swam back in a blink and climbed back on top of the big fish. She walked past us to stand with Sogolon. The great fish started moving again.
“Fat cow, cantankerousness growing in her old age,” she said.
I went over to the Leopard. He still sat with Fumeli, both of them with knees drawn up to chest.
“I will have words with you,” I said.
He stood up, as did Fumeli. Both wore leather skirts, but the Leopard was not as uneasy with it as he was back at Kulikulo Inn.
“You only,” I said.
Fumeli refused to sit, until the Leopard turned around and nodded.
“Wearing sandals next?”
“What is this about?” Leopard asked.
“You have something else pressing you? Another meeting on the back of this fish?”
“What is this about?”
“I went to see an elder about Basu Fumanguru. Just to see if these stories would turn true. He told me that the Fumanguru house fell to sickness, caught from a river demon. But when I said something about cutting my hand and throwing blood, he looked up to the ceiling before I even said it. He knows. And he lied. Bisimbi is not a river demon. They have no love for rivers.”
“So that is where you went?”
“Yes, that is where I went.”
“Where is this elder now?”
“With his ancestors. He tried to kill me when I told him he was lying. Here is the thing. I do not think he knew of the child.”
“So?”
“A chief elder and not know about his own? He said the youngest boy was ten and five.”
“It’s still riddles, what you say,” the Leopard said.
“I say this. The boy was not Fumanguru’s son, no matter what Bunshi or the slaver or anyone says. I am sure the elder knew Fumanguru was going to be murdered, might have ordered it himself. But he counted eight bodies, which is what he expected to count.”
“He knows of the murder, but does not know of the child?”
“Because the child was no son of Fumanguru. Or ward, or kin or even guest. The elder tried to kill me because he saw I knew he knew about the murder. But he did not know there was another boy. Whoever is behind the killing told him nothing,” I said.
“And the boy is not Fumanguru’s son?”
“Why would he have a secret son?”
“Why does Bunshi call him a son?”
“I don’t know.”
“Forget money or goods. People trade only lies in these parts.” He said this looking straight at me.
“Or people only tell you what they think you need to know,” I said.
He looked around for a while, at everybody on the fish, for a good while at the Ogo, who went back to sleep, then back at me.
“Is that all?”
“Is that not enough?”
“If you think so.”
“Fuck the gods, cat. Something has curdled between us.”
“This is what you think.”
“This is what I know. And it has happened in the quick. But I think it’s your Fumeli. He was but a joke to you only days ago. Now you two pull closer and I am your enemy.”
“Me pulling him closer, as you say, makes you my enemy.”
“That is not what I said.”
“It is what you meant.”
“Not that either. You don’t sound like yourself.”
“I sound like—”
“Him.”
He laughed and sat back down beside Fumeli, drawing up his legs to his chest as the boy did.
Daylight ran away from us. I watched it go. Venin was by Sogolon, watching her, sometimes watching the river, sometimes drawing her feet together when she saw she sat on skin, not ground. Everybody else slept, stared into the river, watched sky, or minded their own business.
We came to the shore in the evening. How much time was left for sun, I did not know. The Ogo woke up. Sogolon left the fish first, walking with her horse. The girl, right behind her, grabbed Sogolon’s robe tight, afraid to be even arm’s length away, maybe more because of the oncoming dark. The Ogo wobbled off, still sleepy. The Leopard said something at which Fumeli laughed. He swung his head left and right, then rubbed the boy’s cheek with his forehead. He grabbed the reins of the boy’s horse and walked right past me. Following him, Fumeli said, “Looking out for the date feeder?”
I squeezed my knuckles and let him pass. The girl Venin walked right beside Sogolon as did Bunshi, the fins in the back of her head disappearing. Only a hundred paces from us there it was, rising out of mist so heavy it rested on the ground, with trees tall as mountains and long branches splayed like broken fingers. Huddled together, sharing secrets. So dark green it was blue.
The Darklands.
I have been here before.
We stood and looked at the forest. The Darklands was something mothers told children; a bush of ghosts and monsters, both lie and truth. A day stood between us and Mitu. To go around the Darklands took three or four days and had its own dangers. The forest had something I could never describe, not to them about to go in. Woodpeckers tapped out a beat, telling birds far away that we approach. One tree pushed past the others as if to catch sun. It looked surrounded. Fewer leaves than the other trees, exposing branches spread out wide like a fan, though the trunk was thin. The Darklands was already infecting me.
“Stinkwood,” Sogolon said. “Stinkwood, yellowwood, ironwood, woodpecker, stinkwood, yellowwood, ironwood, woodpecker, stinkwood, yellowwood—”